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- II. Land and People from the Heathen Period
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the Swedes and both these tribes is manifest, if
only from the influence of our language on those
spoken by them, which radically differ from it so
widely; an influence remarkably great on the
Lappic [1], and important also on the Fennic, which
has borrowed from the Swedish all words having
reference to civic government, and culture [2]. All
the Finns Proper who have been found in Scandinavia
immigrated from the eastern side of the gulf
of Bothnia and out of Finland. This can be said
only in part of the Lapps, who consider themselves
as the aboriginal denizens of Sweden [3] and
Norway [4], but whom history cannot accompany so far
back. The Norwegians and Icelanders, from whom
the oldest accounts have come to us, became earlier
acquainted with them than with the Finns of
Finland, with whom on the other hand the old Swedes
were oftenest brought in hostile or amicable
contact. By the former, therefore, the name of Finns
was applied chiefly to the Lapps, and such were
the Finns whom they speak of as scattered in the
ninth century along the whole frontier between
Sweden and Norway. Such, consequently, were
also the Scridfinns whom Adam of Bremen places
northwest of the Swedes above the Vermelanders,
and therefore in the present Dalecarlia. So too
the Finns whose first abode was in the old frontier
forests of West-Gothland [5], after whom the Finn
heaths or wolds of Smaland were already named in
the sixth century [6]. Old Sweden had thus its
Finn woods, like that of modern days. In these
the Lapps retained their stations, and the Finns
also partially occupied them, until, surrounded and
cut off by advancing cultivation, they were either
extirpated or blended with the Swedes, of which
several later settlements of Fennic immigrants in
the forests of Sweden furnish examples. So late as
the eleventh century, eye-witnesses relate [7] that the
mountainous tracts of Sweden had other inhabitants
than the cultivated districts. In those dwelt
a wild people, who sometimes yearly, and
sometimes every third year, broke from their unknown
lurking places, and spread devastation over the
levels, unless vigorously opposed, retreating with
equal haste. These remnants of Fennic races are
demonstrably the Jotuners or Jotuns of the heathen
Scalds [8] and of Snorro Sturleson [9]; and probably
also the Huns of later popular legends, to whom the
names of so many places in Southern Sweden refer.
*
Of the Swedish polity we will here merely
sketch the outlines, deferring their further
developement until we approach the consideration of
the old laws, which in their present shape belong
to the Christian period, although resting on
principles of higher antiquity.
Among all the Germanic races, the Scandinavians
pre-eminently retained the conception of
the divine origin of the first social union. Their
earliest rulers are styled Diar, Drottnar, denominations
applying in common to gods, priests, and
judges. With twelve such did Odin sit in
judgment, and with twelve of the wisest men the
Upsala king uttered his decrees in his court [10]. The
great yearly sacrifices assembled and united the
people. At the place of their celebration peace
[1] Of 11,433 words contained in the Lexicon Lapponicum
of Lindahl and Öhrling (Holm. 1780), about one tenth, by
computation, are borrowed from the Swedish, notwithstanding
the fundamental dissimilarity of both languages.
[2] For example; kuningas (konung, king), tuomari (domare,
judge), valtakunta (välde, power), ruthinas (drott), esivalta
(authority), sakko (sak, böter, plea, fine), kaupungi (köping,
place),tori (torg, market), markina (marknad, fair), and others;
also the names of most handicrafts except of the smith and
weaver (kanguri). On the other hand, the terms for
cattle-breeding, hunting, navigation, agriculture, are indigenous.
Though the northern sagas speak of Finnish kings, it is only
by a transference of this name to the ideas of father of a
family, overseer, ruler, for which there are Finnic words.
[3] Compare Ancient History of Sweden, 419, n. 9.
[4] The Lapps of Norway, especially those with fixed abodes,
who desire to be called Finns, and contemn the Norsemen,
as well as the wandering Lapps, maintain that they are the
true old inhabitants of all Norway. Rask on the Ancient
Northern Language, p. 114.
[5] In Adam of Bremen, Finnvedi. Compare above. In
Kind’s Hundred of West-Gothland, one parish still bears
the name of Finne-kumla.
[6] Finnaithæ, in Jordanes, is so like Fineyde, that we can
recognize their identity. It has been objected, that in the
Finnwold (Finn heden), there are no Fennic or Lappic names
remaining; some, however, may be found. Sulivara, a
village in the parish of Angulstad, may be named. Even were
this the only example, it should be considered that names of
estates and granges matter little in this question. Those of
mountains, forests, lakes, streams, the original features of
nature, are of greater importance, although even their
appellations are changed. The Swedes were always and from of
old peculiarly the cultivators of the soil, and with their labour
they everywhere baptized it, even where others had preceded
them. I am myself from a province (Vermeland), where
there have been Finn woods from the time of Charles IX.,
when Finns were brought from Savolax in Finland to
Vermeland, a kind of colonization, of which there seem to have
been prior examples here; but Swedish names always
sprung up with Swedish settlements, so that few or no Fennic
appellations were preserved in those quarters where were
formerly settlements or wolds of the Finns; even real
Finnish villages of the parishes of Ny and Dalby in Vermeland
bear among their Swedish neighbours names quite different
from those of the Finns themselves. In Norrland, also in
the parish of Nether Tornea, where the Finns are most
numerous, the Swedish names of the hamlets are often
translations of the Fennic. This custom with our ancestors, of
changing Fennic into Swedish appellations, is so old, that
the Sagas, though full of intimations as to the intercourse
between the two races, have not preserved a single Fennic name.
[7] Ab his, qui hæc se vidisse testantur. Ad. Brem. Hist.
Eccles. c. 232.
[8] Thor is called by the heathen Scalds the “overthrower
of the altars of the Fornjotic god,” “the conqueror of the
mountain god,” “the slayer of the mountain-wolves, the
hill-folk, the sons of the rocks, the Jotnar.” He cast to the
ground, they say, “the king of the people of the earth-holes,
and the chief of the Finns on the fells.” See the passages
cited in “Ancient History of Sweden,” 274.
[9] Heimskr. Saga of Harald the Fair-haired, c. 25. Many
proofs may be brought to shew that this was generally the
meaning of the Icelanders. So for example Snorro says that
Norway stretched from the Göta river to Finmark; Heimskr.
Saga of St. Olave, c. 59. This is manifestly the same
boundary line given in the Fundin Noregur (in Biörner, p.
6), where it is said that Norway is the name of the whole
country from Jotunheim southwards to Alfheim. Jotunheim
and Finnmark were therefore one and the same. But the
first, which was the mythic denomination, receded
continually towards the north-east. Jotunheim, as the opposite
of Manheim or Suithiod, originally bounded the latter on
the north, and embraced even Swedish Norrland, formerly
inhabited by Quens and Lapps. Here, too, lay the fabulous
Hunaland, which in Ketil Heng’s Saga, c. 6, is mentioned in
connexion with Gestricland, although this Hunaland, like
Jotunheim, was removed higher to the north. The Huns of
the popular legends mean heathens or barbarians generally.
[10] Saga of St. Olave, c. 96.
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